


circle game

by temerity (forsanethaec)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Domesticity, M/M, Polyamory, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 10:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/temerity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis finds he can love them both because he's grateful, because Niall tempers them and Harry is, somehow, an anchor, and there's no luckier thing than not having to choose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	circle game

**Author's Note:**

> this is a lot of rambling but whatever ot3 ride or die

Even for three people, a California king is a big bed. It takes up almost the whole room, constantly rumpled, like they live in it. They don't, precisely, but it's the centerpiece anyway. 

Louis learns early that sleeping, literally just sleeping, with Niall and Harry at the same time is delightfully challenging. Niall sprawls out like a starfish, somehow tangled in the sheets and completely uncovered at the same time. He sleeps like the dead and still manages to throw his limbs all over everyone else in the night, waking at angles and twisted up, his arm under Louis' back and one of his legs between Harry's thighs. Harry curls up, cat-like, nuzzling. He always wants to be the little spoon, which is impractical since he's the longest, monopolizes the most room, and also there are three of them. But Harry just wants to touch, is the bottom line, so Louis does what he can to fit himself into the middle. He likes it best when he can fall asleep smiling with his nose tucked into someone's space, his hands curled in clothes or against skin, warm everywhere, trapped and doing a bit of the trapping as well. 

There are other rooms, other pieces of the furniture, all theirs. But this is the best one. It's the first one Louis checks for other bodies when he comes home, and the last one he ever wants to leave. 

 

When they first got to see the house it was all light and space and warm wood tones and they'd known right away they'd found the one. High ceilings in the living room, exposed beams like the ribs of a big, solid creature, begging for rugs and random expensive shit accumulated over the years and to be lived in, filled. Harry had stood in the foyer staring up at the skylights with his mouth open, throat tipped back and arching out of his coat collar, and Louis had been watching how he fit into the house rather than looking at the house itself. 

Then Niall had made a beeline for the kitchen, and Louis had bolted after him with Harry on his heels.

"Oh, god." He'd practically moaned it when Louis and Harry caught up with him. His hands on the extravagant oven range, eyes raking over the counters. "I want it." 

"Look at the island," Harry had said, grinning slow like it was funny. Louis leaned against the fridge with his arms crossed and twisted his mouth at both of them. 

Harry came to rest behind Niall's back, draped against him, hands in his front pockets and chin on his shoulder. They looked up together at Louis, pleading. Louis laughed. They were a single unit, and they were his. 

"Don't look at me like I need convincing," he'd said, shifting forward. "It's ours." 

 

Niall takes to it quickest at the beginning, before they're quite sure how to do this. He was always the first to insinuate himself, and it's easy to follow his lead: breakfast for three, always expecting a body to the left and to the right, the phantom limb feeling that comes when someone is missing and doesn't shake until they're there again. Harry gets jealous easily but jealousy goes when they're on equal footing, when it's not just wanting Niall just as much as Louis but wanting them together. And Louis -- Louis finds he can love them both because he's grateful, because Niall tempers them and Harry is, somehow, an anchor, and there's no luckier thing than not having to choose. It's funny, because he doesn't think Harry and Niall are aware of that as much as he is, and that's what he loves most about them. That they don't overthink or question. They can look at this as normal, like there's no reason for it not to be this way. 

Maybe there isn't. Louis wonders if that's really as amazing as it seems to be to him, that love can compromise without compromising, can adapt. It can stretch farther than two people and still be inclusive. It can stretch as far as it needs to. 

 

Turning into what they are now was as easy as forming a habit, though of course it was Harry’s doing at the beginning. It’s back when Louis and Harry are slightly more than something, just a kind of default, like they’re stuck orbiting in one another’s well of gravity. He loves Harry, truly, and also they’re difficult together. It’s not a caveat; it’s part of what he loves, that edge. 

And Louis isn’t jealous – he doesn’t feel as though he could be jealous of the way Niall looks at Harry, or the way Harry always just wants to hang on Niall like a blanket, nose in the crook of his neck. 

Niall is never, ever difficult.

Drunk night, hotel room, the others long since drifted off, and this is how it starts: if Harry and Louis are something, Niall is something else. Louis is hot under his skin, his hips restless, thinking too much as he watches them with their heads together on the opposite couch. Whispering, tangled up with each other, legs locked like the teeth of a zipper. 

He thinks he’d have to be blind to miss the way Niall’s eyes follow him, how his face never lights up quite the same for anyone else. Louis can’t dislike that, can’t be expected not to love Niall, surely. What isn’t there to love?

And then Harry is standing and leading Niall over by the hand. The room is empty otherwise, and it’s very late, and suddenly all Louis can see is Harry and Niall looming over him, Harry’s eyes all dark and intent and a flush scattered across Niall’s cheeks, his wet mouth.

“Lou,” Harry murmurs, like a question, and then Niall is moving forward a little, Harry’s hand at the small of his back. 

“Louis?” Niall echoes, quieter. 

“Hi,” Louis breathes. He sees Harry’s mouth quirk by half, and he doesn’t know what’s funny, can’t stop his eyes flicking back to Niall standing in front of him all hesitance and nervous fingers at his sides. Harry prods at him and Niall drops across Louis’ hips, a compulsive little movement, knees folding under. 

It’s as Louis lets out a surprised breath that Niall brings their mouths together. He kisses like he isn’t sure but really, really wants to be, and Louis is kissing him back before he can think about it, something single-minded in the weight of Niall on him, his familiar warm boy smell. He isn’t thinking of Harry until he feels a thumb stroking in the pit of his jaw beneath his ear, and he knows it’s not Niall’s because Niall’s hands are on his chest and he can just tell, how it’s not as new a feeling like the rest, Harry’s touch. He shifts into it a little, feeling a crease between his eyebrows, and pulls Niall closer to him. Harry settles beside them on the couch. Louis’ hands slide beneath Niall’s shirt over his spine and back down and then Harry’s hand is there, flat against the skin, and he laces his fingers with Louis’ over the small of Niall’s back. 

And Louis is drunk, alright, and he’s not sure he’s entirely following this but he trusts it somehow, because kissing Niall is endlessly lovely, how he’s earnest to the point of desperation and Harry is right there. It’s not as confusing as it should be. It feels good. 

Harry’s lips end up mouthing at the curve of his shoulder just at the collar of his shirt, and Louis’ head is spinning, and then Niall’s pulling back with a sound in his throat like he’d rather not. He stares at Louis for a second, all close and blown wide, and then he smiles. And that, right there, that’s it. 

“You’re mad,” Louis tells Harry with the surety of the very drunk, leaning back. They both curl forward with him. 

“Fuckin’ right he is.” Niall’s breathlessness belies his nonchalance. 

Harry grins lazily. “You lads are welcome,” he says – such a little shit – and he pulls Niall in for a kiss. Louis watches that for a while. It’s happening on top of him, his own fingers still curled in Niall’s hair and Niall’s skating across the highest point of his thigh as Harry squirms against them both. 

As though the deal hadn’t been sealed before they’d even begun. 

 

There’s an odd part of Louis that likes best waking up with only one of them in the bed, so he can curl his arm around Niall’s neck and pull his face in smushed against his chest and murmur into the top of his head, “Where’s Haz?” or stretch out against Harry’s long side with his head half beneath the covers and mumble against his warm skin, “Did Nialler go,” and know that both of them are wondering it just as much. It’s the first thing they say, a lot of the time. 

Better, though, is the two of them left over finding Niall in the kitchen making six helpings of egg on toast, or finding Harry waiting in the shower, or finding either one stumbling back into bed a moment later and muttering about coming out to play FIFA. They’ll make it, eventually, but most days not without a lie-in – Harry curled against Louis’ right side, Niall against his left, both Louis’ arms going numb beneath them and not one place else he’d rather be.


End file.
